“I had ‘em, too,” she whispers, as if she doesn’t want Tomás to hear. But of course he does. Not that he says anything, no, he just continues to peck peck peck away at his laptop.
The man with the clay body is trying to say something but his mouth is a melted mass. He moves around the table until he’s standing next to me. I refuse to acknowledge his presence. I try to breathe evenly through my nose, inhale, exhale, steady your breath and don’t scream. They aren’t real. They’re just hallucinations. Photocopies on two feet. It’s only in your head…
What did the plaque in the lobby say? Fire. The Burning of Richmond. How many ironworkers died here? Where are they now?
Everywhere.
I’m tripping. That’s all this is—just another bad trip. Of course it’s all in my mind. Nobody else sees what I’m seeing, clearly, so I just need to keep cool and not panic. Why did I double my dose of Ghost? Stupid, stupid Erin what the hell were you thinking—
“They bring the juniors in to walk them through the new accounts and see if we can—”
get haunted
“—so don’t forget to bring your laptop.”
“Thanks,” I say to Becca as if I’ve been paying attention this whole time.
A sudden gust of singed steak fills my nose. Someone is standing next to me, but I’m not going to look. I refuse to look. Not even from the corner of my eye. They lean forward, whoever they are. What are they doing, I ask, and suddenly can’t stop asking, the litany repeating in my head, God, what are they doing. What’re they doing whatretheydoingwhatretheydoingwhat…
The man with the Play-Doh face approaches from the other side. He leans in and sniffs, he’s smelling me oh god he’s smelling me, as if I’m exuding some phantasmal pheromone.
My stomach lunges. Oh—not this again. Please, God, not now. The Ghost wants to come back up, I can feel it. The first lurch tightens my belly and I force myself to swallow.
There’s a third burnt spirit now. They’re all leaning in—smelling me. They want a taste.
They’re not there not there not there—
I’m going to be sick. I feel it coming—rising. My throat tightens as I keep swallowing it down. Please don’t do this, not now. Not here.
These spirits smell the Ghost on me. In me.
“How’s it going over here?” Lorraine says. I slap my laptop shut so she can’t see my search for dead drugs mushroom ghost séance. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah. Becca’s just giving me the lay of the land.” I smile at Becca, but she’s clearly distancing herself, returning to her work with barely a nod.
Bile rises in my throat. It has the taste of loam and it takes all the strength I can muster to gulp it back down. I smile even as the scalded spirits close in, sealing off the suffocating space around us, pressing their noses against my face, running their shriveled tongues across my cheeks, reaching into my earlobes, over my forehead, all the nooks and crannies of my body, just trying to find that yumminess within me, whatever it is, surging up my throat.
“Don’t stress over figuring everything out right away,” Lorraine says. “It took me a—”
I can’t do it. I can’t hold back anymore. I’m going to vomit. I need to—
Need to—
“Is there a ladies room?”
Lorraine blinks. “Yeah. Right over here. I’ll take you.”
I don’t want her to take me. I need to be alone. I abandon my seat, pushing past my entourage of phantoms as I try to breathe steadily through my nose.
Standing settles my stomach. That’s better. At least I won’t get sick on the work floor.
“You smoke?” Lorraine asks as she guides me to the restroom.
“No. I mean, yeah, sometimes.” Smoke means fire means cindered skin.
“That makes two of us. Strength in numbers. The higher-ups really get in a pinch over the number of smokers and I’m all like, well, helloooo, one of our own accounts is Marlboro.”
There’s an octopus in my stomach. I can feel it. I remember the mural painted across the side of Fan Thrift as its pale tentacles slip around my intestines, searching for a way out.
Almost there, I say to myself. Don’t make a fool out of yourself and puke in front of all these people, all your so-called coworkers, don’t you do it, Erin, don’t you fucking dare—
I glance over my shoulder to see how far Lorraine is behind me, and I realize we’re being followed. There’s a spirit trailing after us. Ol’ rack of ribs doesn’t want to part company just yet.
I pick up the pace and push through the door before Lorraine can. The restroom walls are a slate gray illuminated by fluorescent lights overhead. Three stalls and three sinks.
Lorraine takes the first stall while I head for the third. She’s still talking, for Christ’s sake. Her voice bounces off the slate. “—here for a couple years. Who’d you interview with?”
I press my palm against my chest as I manage to say, “Mr. Gidding?”
“Wow.” She whistles. “Outta the frying pan—”
“—into the fire.”
I push open the stall door and immediately freeze when I realize someone is already standing inside. “Sorry,” I say purely on reflex.
But the door was unlatched. And it’s not a woman—it’s a man. He’s not sitting on the toilet, just standing there, staring. The right side of his face has cratered. His cheeks have sloughed away. His exposed jaw reveals a row of blackened teeth. It almost looks like he’s smiling at me. I press the back of my hand firmly against my mouth to keep from retching on the floor. How long has he been waiting there? Jesus, how many of them are there in this building?
“You okay?” Lorraine cautiously asks from her stall. She’s probably asking herself what she did in a previous life to deserve getting stuck training a screwup like me.
“Yeah. Fine.” I’m still standing outside the third stall, struggling to maintain the chipperness in my voice while my insides roil. “First day jitters is all.”
Didn’t I already say that? How many times can I repeat the same excuse?
“We all get them.” Everyone here is just politely going through the motions, but they just don’t know—they don’t see—what’s surrounding them, always surrounding them.
Here it comes oh it’s coming oh god I’m going to puke I’m going to—
Lorraine’s still chatting as I run into the middle stall and slam the door, latch rattling. “Just between you and me, I’d steer clear of him. His hands have a way of, well, finding you.”
I feel the Ghost surge through my esophagus. It’s coming up and nothing I can do will stop it. Everything within me twists. My body turns inside out. What’s happening to me…
“Make sure you’re never in his office alone. As soon as that door closes…”
The thick stalk drags itself up my throat like an uprooted flower, tugging up clods of my intestines with it. I don’t believe I’ve ever felt anything as painful as this. Please make it stop…
“He’s done it to just about every one of us. It’s a rite of passage. HR has a whole fucking dossier on the bastard, but they won’t touch him because it’s his company. Makes me sick.”
I lean against the door and press both hands against the walls in hopes of pinning myself in place as my body rocks through its convulsions, expelling this tendril of viscous matter into the air. I pray Lorraine can’t hear me gagging. I just want this thing out of me get it out get it out.
“Guess you can get away with murder when you’re the cofounder, am I right?”
I grip the stem of ectoplasm and try pulling it free, hand over hand, like a magician pulling handkerchiefs out of his sleeve at a children’s birthday party. But there’s just too much of it. There’s no end. This root reaches down deep, all the way to my core. The tendril ripples against my lips, pulsing as it moves sinuously through the air above my head in a hovering coil.